I like this story a lot. Not because it has any new information, really, but because it involves a mayor of a large U.S. city basically saying “I have a secret and I can’t tell you so nyah, nyah nyah.”

Short version: the Rays want out of St. Pete because its not economically viable to play in the Trop. While the city has a pretty iron-clad lease requiring that the Rays stay, there are allegedly conversations being had about a plan that would either keep the Rays in St. Pete in a manner more to the team’s liking or that would allow them to look elsewhere without penalty or … something.

And that’s where the silliness comes in, with the mayor making oblique allusions to secret plans — he actually uses the term “secret plan” — that no one besides him apparently knows about.

Politics has become so polished and detached from the human experience. I love it when once in a while the polish comes off and you see public officials acting like little kids or something.

Didn’t Nixon have a secret plan to end the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (which didn’t end until four years after he was elected?) One wonders whether bombing Cambodia was part of the original secret plan or a later improvisation.

Florida state politics is bad enough, but some of their city stuff is amazing. I just got back from a week there and it just leaves your head spinning. No surprise there is a “secret” plan that involves big money interests.